Journal of Religion & Film

Volume 2 Issue 3 Special Issue (December 1998): Article 4 Spotlight on Teaching

December 1998

Teaching Religion and Film

Paul Flesher University of Wyoming, [email protected]

Robert Torry University of Wyoming, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Flesher, Paul and Torry, Robert (1998) "Teaching Religion and Film," Journal of Religion & Film: Vol. 2 : Iss. 3 , Article 4. Available at: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol2/iss3/4

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UNO. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Religion & Film by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@UNO. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Teaching Religion and Film

Abstract Paul V. M. Flesher and Robert Tory give a brief overview of the course Film and Religion taught at the University of Wyoming . For further information to help teach this course and its movies yourself, see our more extensive essay in the Spring, 1998, issue of the Journal of Religion & Film.

This article is available in Journal of Religion & Film: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol2/iss3/4 Flesher and Torry: Teaching Religion and Film

The course Film and Religion taught at the University of Wyoming focuses

on how film uses religion rather than on how religion uses film. We analyze how

main-stream movies appropriate religious imagery and themes, rather than how

religions use film to communicate their beliefs and practices. The course thus

becomes a study of the role of religion in popular culture and the way in which

religion becomes the vehicle for aesthetic, social, political and other cultural

purposes. These two emphases influence the course in different ways. The ways

film uses religion provide the course's organizing framework, while the cultural

debates in which religion appears comprise the ultimate question of analysis.1

Film has two main approaches to religion and so we divide the course into

two sections. First, there are films on religious topics, which can be subdivided into

biblical stories, such as The Ten Commandments (1956) and Jesus Christ Superstar

(1973), and religious stories, such as Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1973). Second,

there are essentially secular films that use religious imagery and symbolism for a

variety of purposes. These purposes include narrative structure (The Rapture

[1991]), social commentary (The Exorcist [1973]), and political persuasion (When

Worlds Collide [1951]). The films range from genre types--science fiction, horror,

western--to groups defined in religious terms--millennial films and Christmas

movies.

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In the first half of the semester, we focus on films that depict biblical stories,

such as Salome (1922), The Ten Commandments, King of Kings (1951), Jesus

Christ Superstar, or The Life of Brian (1979). The main focus of this set of films is

"Jesus movies," preceded by films selected to introduce students to the goals and

questions of the course. In studying these text-based films, we emphasize two main

issues. First, how accurately do films depict the text? Second, how does that

depiction develop into a cultural statement?

In the first class, we teach Salome, a short piece based on Oscar Wilde's

play. Here we start the students thinking about the film's relationship to the biblical

text--what does it draw from scripture? what does it present differently?--assisted

by analyzing Matthew's version of this story prior to viewing the film. These

insights lead to a discussion of the film's interpretation of religious themes and

symbols.

Two films we have used for the second class provide a basis for discussion

of how film uses religion to discuss social and cultural issues. The Little Minister

(1934) focuses on labor and class issues while telling a love story involving a

Scottish minister and a supposed gypsy (played by Katherine Hepburn). Brother

Sun, Sister Moon also debates class concerns and the place of "earning a living,"

while telling the story of Francis of Assisi.

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The Ten Commandments provides an opportunity to bring the lessons of the

first two classes together. This film enables both the analysis of the film's

relationship to the biblical story and the examination of the film's use of scripture

to take a position on an important political and moral issue of the time--the use of

nuclear weapons.2 By drawing attention to the differences between Exodus and the

movie, we point out how the film differs from the biblical story, even as it claims

the text's authority and authentication. Those differences then lead to the cultural

analysis in which we see the film arguing that the use of absolute power (God,

nuclear weapons) brings salvation of a nation (Israel, USA).

The Jesus movies continue this dual emphasis; in class discussion we

emphasize the films' use of religious symbolism for cultural purposes, while the

assignments focus on how biblical themes and events are transformed into film.3

King of Kings, filmed a few years after The Ten Commandments, carries forward

the earlier movie's concern with the impact of nuclear war. By this time, however,

the USA no longer has absolute power, but shares it with the USSR's new nuclear

strength; the film's paralleling of Jesus and Barabbas argues against violence and

for peaceful interaction. Jesus Christ Superstar, by contrast, plays to several

cultural debates. The portrayal of Judas as Black provides a clear link to the Civil

Rights struggles, while the music and the actors' hippie character derive from the

1960's youth culture. Furthermore, the film's setting and the use of modern Israeli

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and Palestinian images points to the Mideast Conflict. Finally, we show The Life of

Brian following the midterm exam; it provides some relaxed viewing as well as

some funny, yet provoking, political and religious commentary.4

The second half of the semester focuses on a variety of films drawn from

different genres and religious topics which show the many uses religion receives in

movies not overtly addressing religious themes.5 The following indicates the films

we draw upon.

Science fiction films provide a wealth of material: The Day the Earth Stood

Still (1951), When Worlds Collide (1951), E.T. (1982), and Close Encounters of the

Third Kind (1977).6 Indeed, science fiction (and horror) films often lend themselves

for use in this course because their concern with representations of the marvelous,

the supernatural, and, occasionally, the transcendent links them with the traditional

products and discourses of the religious imagination. Our interest in the social and

political implications of religious narratives often prompts us to use The Day the

Earth Stood Still, which makes fascinating use of religious iconography and

allusion to address the geo-political anxieties and hopes of the early Cold War era.

That Klaatu, the alien visitor to this planet, is intended as a Christ-figure has long

been recognized. We however focus more on his message's disturbing content.

Klaatu's civilization has gained perpetual peace by creating a race of robots

inalterably programmed to destroy any planet breaking the peace. When he tells the

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people of earth that any exportation of aggression will be so punished, Klaatu's

message sounds like a virulent version of Cold War containment policy. Thus

"Christ" delivers and condones the application of terrific (i.e., nuclear) force in the

service of peace.

Although several horror films use religious themes (e.g., The Omen [1976]

and The Seventh Sign [1988]), we typically use The Exorcist (1973). The film fits

our purposes well because it critiques modern religious belief (or, rather, the lack

of it) by deploring the inadequacies of secular explanatory theories (medicine,

psychiatry, the law). The possession of Regan emerges as a metaphor for the

invasion of the modern psyche by materialist ideology. Thus Father Karras, the

highly educated rationalist who is losing his faith, appears as the true victim of

possession.

Closely allied to horror films depicting religious ideas are films that draw

upon millennium and end-of-the-world themes (e.g., The Rapture [1991],

Rosemary's Baby [1968]). Sometimes this is done in an obvious--if inaccurate--

manner in a film like the Seventh Sign. Other times, the use of millennialist schema

are buried, providing the story's narrative structure rather than its subject matter.

This is true for Star Wars (1977), for which we often begin the discussion by asking

why Han Solo's ship is called the Millennium Falcon.

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Christmas films (It's A Wonderful Life [1946], Scrooged [1988], Miracle on

34th Street [1947]) and angel films (such as Angels in the Outfield [1994]) lend

themselves to a similar analysis; they tend to treat religious elements without

reference to religion. So Christian ethics, magical (i.e., divine) powers, and

religious symbols (angels, spirits and heaven) are removed from Christianity and

treated as stand-alone elements of the culture. Many Christmas films, of course,

also lend themselves to the analysis of material vs. spiritual/human values,7 while

angel films can lead to a discussion of the current "angel phenomenon."

Finally, a few general comments on the course are in order. We model Film

and Religion on a literature course. Like the books in a novel course, the movies

are the texts. Learning derives from discussion of them, and needs only a small

amount of supportive further reading.8 The class meets one night a week for up to

four hours; this includes introductory remarks and viewing time as well as

discussion and analysis. Although this makes a long night, it enables discussion

while the film remains fresh in the students' minds. Teaching the course this way,

in our mind, gives instructors the best of the teaching experience. On the one hand,

teachers must study the movie and work out their analysis beforehand. On the other

hand, student discussion may lead in unforeseen directions and instructors must be

quick to follow the students' lead and use the students' observations to unpack the

place of religion and its themes and symbolism in the film.

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1 This essay gives a brief overview of this course. For further information to help teach this course and its movies yourself, see our more extensive essay in the Spring, 1998, issue of the Journal of Religion & Film.

2 See Alan Nadel, "God's Law and the Wide Screen: The Ten Commandments as Cold War 'Epic'," Proceedings of the Modern Language Association of America 108:3 (1993): 415-430.

3 For other films on Jesus, read J. Engelbrecht, "Jesus in Films: A Century Observed," Scriptura 52 (1995): 11-25.

4 The Jesus Section provides the basis for the first major assignment, the goal of which is to get the students themselves to wrestle with how the films treat the biblical text and to work out cultural reasons that explain it. The assignment is simple. Part 1: pick a secondary character (e.g., Peter, Mary) or group of people (e.g., Romans, priests) in the gospels and describe how the gospels portray them. Part 2: after viewing the two movies, write an essay describing the similarities and differences between the gospels' depiction and the movies', and explain what cultural point is made by that treatment.

5 This section's main writing assignment (i.e., the final paper) is to analyze two movies (from a selected list) and to show how religion is used to discuss cultural developments.

6 For Close Encounters, read Robert Torry, "Politics and Parousia in Close Encounters of the Third Kind," Literature/Film Quarterly 19:3 (1991): 188-196. For the two 1951 films, read Robert Torry, "Apocalypse Then: Benefits of the Bomb in Fifties Science Fiction Films," Cinema Journal 31:1 (1991): 7-21.

7 For a study that shows how a story aimed against commercialism--Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol--becomes transformed into a film vehicle for consumerism, see Caroline McCracken- Flesher, "The Incorporation of A Christmas Carol: A Tale of Seasonal Screening," Dickens Studies Annual 24 (1996): 93-118.

8 We assign passages from William R. Manchester's The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974) to provide a general idea of the cultural issues. Of course, we also have students read the bible.

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